"Adam Greenfield of Urbanscale, LLC discusses the many technologies used to collect and convey information around public spaces, and the ethical issues underlying them, as well as a proposal for how technologies could be better harnessed for the public good. Jeffrey Schnapp of the Metalab moderates.

The Hyperpublic symposium brings together computer scientists, ethnographers, architects, historians, artists and legal scholars to discuss how design influences privacy and public space, how it shapes and is shaped by human behavior and experience, and how it can cultivate norms such as tolerance and diversity."

"sometimes it’s hard to see past one’s ideological blinders, to say nothing of one’s own ego and ambition."

"otsukaresama deshita, which is the customary way of thanking Japanese colleagues for a collective effort; ironically enough, I hated having these compulsory and merely performative-feeling ritual greetings expected of me when I actually lived and worked in Japan, but have come to miss having a handy figure of speech to acknowledge consciousness of the debt one owes to one’s coworkers and their diligence"

"…this instinct arises from a deep belief in value of transparency as a way to demystify some of otherwise obscure processes that attend tech startups & early-stage creative practices of all types…direct analogue to open-source software development…

…another reason to be forthright about our stumbles & setbacks…to push back…against relentless pressure that exists in our culture to always present oneself…as on-message, serenely omnicompetent, & moving only & ever in a forward direction.

…pathological fear of appearing fallible is most likely a transfer from culture of large-scale, publicly-held concerns…clearly also dynamic that exists in society at large…ongoing presentation of self, & brutal economic conditions force each of us to position ourselves at all times…The invariably smooth & placid surfaces that get presented to the world contrast mightily with an interiority we know to be roiling w/ complication, in the case of individuals & institutions both."

"the course also included some reading…we decided that compiling and designing a newspaper with all the reading for the course would be a better route to success. We had a 20-page newspaper printed by…Newspaper Club…The very fact of having a physical artefact, laying around on the desks in the studio, is a constant reminder that there is related reading to be done, and it invites browsing in a way a list of links or open tabs does not. It also has the advantage of being print — there’s much greater control (albeit with commensurately more effort) over presentation, of curating a selection, of removing distractions, no links, of considering what sits next to what. Texts from blogs can sit next to more historical texts, forcing the ideas to bounce and spark off each other. Not to mention, it ends up being a rather nice object to keep around, to glance at or refer to later.<br />
<br />
Find below a list of the content in the newspaper we handed out as a form of shortened reading list."

"I think the artistic intent of these concepts could be enhanced with study of Joseph Beuys' work, particularly the Free International University, as well as Situationist International and their desire to create environments for discovering and appreciating the true value of things rather than their staged value.<br />
<br />
All of this makes for excellent examples to add to my essay in progress on Ubiquitous Learning - a critique, where I'm trying to argue that the words ubiquity and learning have nothing inherently to do with technology, and are instead words of ethical dimension, so the phrase ubiquitous learning should become one more to do with an ethical approach or framework to learning, and not one suggesting a technological determination of it."

"…despite South Africa’s clear desire to benefit from so-called “South-to-South” knowledge transfer, Curitiba- or Bogota-style BRT strategies have proven untenable…more supple solutions have appeared, notably rise of informal transportation sector…<br />
…swarm-like behavior…relatively effortless way in which taxi operators have incorporated tech…endlessly fascinating…But SA government’s pragmatic response to rise of informal transit…particularly clever & inspiring…[explained]…This kind of light touch on part of gov extends at least some basic protections to riders, w/out imposing laggy top-down planning on system as whole.<br />
Pieterse really got me thinking about potential of informal transit for my own city…seems to be one of those areas where architecture of safety regulation, labor laws, & other protective measures we embraced in society—for good & sufficient reason!—also inhibits emergence of more flexible & potentially more effective & sustainable modes of getting around."

"Around the world, urban form and metropolitan experience are being transformed by the presence of networked computation. The urban fabric and discrete elements in it are newly empowered to capture, process, transmit, display and even act on information. At the same time, our daily tactics of doing and being — practices of citying that have remained invisible throughout recorded history, and have generally been lost to that history — are now being rendered explicit and gathered up by that same network.<br />
<br />
Nurri Kim and Adam Greenfield of Do projects have run “walkshops” devoted to exploring these transformation and their consequences in cities worldwide. Through the Transformations series, they offer Systems/Layers, a quick guide to running a walkshop for yourself, covering the particulars of choosing a terrain, knowing what to look for, recruiting participants, and promoting your event."

"What do we call places where the above things apply? In recognition of the increasing ubiquity, everydayness and unremarkability of the technologies involved, we call them cities."

"Adam Greenfield - On Public Objects: Connected Things And Civic Responsibilities In The Networked City."

"These are not the “smart cities” IBM, Oracle and Cisco want to deploy — or, more properly, to sell to municipal bodies the world over. They require neither greenfield sites nor the patronage of a paternalist government. These are simply the cities we already live in, and love, endowed with all the new capabilities and potentials an emerging technology can offer. If this is to be a century of networked cities, as the consultants and thinktanks keep telling us it will be, we passionately believe that any such thing not merely can, but must, be built on a foundation of respect, empathy and care. This, anyway, is the effort to which we’ve devoted ourselves at Urbanscale. We hope you’ll join us."